FCC set to vote against Comcast

If reports are to be believed, the majority of FCC commissioners will vote in favor of punishing Comcast for secretly impeding BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing on its network. Scheduled to take place at the FCC on Friday, the entire case stemmed from a request [1] (pdf) submitted by the Free Press in November 2007. On the other hand, Comcast and their supporters do not agree [2] that the FCC has the authority to impose any penalty. (You can read up on more arguments to the effect here [3]) Personally, while I am all for unrestricted Internet access, I question if any Internet Service Provider (ISP) can maintain viability in the face of unrestricted network utilization.  Will punishments force ISPs to eventually revert back to metered Internet, or simply spur greater competitiveness? Only time will tell.

For more on this debacle:
- check out this BetaNews article [4]